Paul Allen

For other people named Paul Allen, see Paul Allen (disambiguation).

Paul Allen
File:PaulAllen.jpg
Born	(1953-01-21) January 21, 1953 Seattle, Washington
Occupation(s)	Chairman, Vulcan Inc. and Charter Communications
Website	paulallen.com

Paul Gardner Allen (born January 21, 1953) is an American entrepreneur whose fortune was founded when he formed Microsoft with Bill Gates. He regularly appears on lists of the richest people in the world; as of 2006 he is ranked by Forbes magazine as the sixth richest, worth an estimated $25.2 billion. He is the Chairman of Charter Communications, but is no longer a shareholder in Dreamworks Animation. He was recently invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

Allen also owns two professional sports teams: The Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League and the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association.

He currently resides in Mercer Island, Washington, USA.

Early years

Paul Gardner Allen was born in Seattle, Washington to parents Kenneth S. Allen, an associate director of the University of Washington libraries, and Faye G. Allen, in 1953. Allen attended Lakeside School, a prestigious private school in Seattle, and befriended Bill Gates, who was two years his junior but shared a common enthusiasm for computers. They used Lakeside's teletype terminal to develop their programming skills on several timesharing computer systems. After graduation, Allen attended Washington State University, and was an active member in Phi Kappa Theta Fraternity, though he dropped out after two years to go and work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston, which placed him near his old friend again. He later convinced Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard University in order to create Microsoft. Paul Allen was a model student in his years at Lakeside School.

Microsoft

Microsoft staff photo from December 7, 1978. Allen in bottom row, far right.

For more information, see History of Microsoft

With Bill Gates, he co-founded Microsoft (initially "Micro-Soft") in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975, and began selling a BASIC programming language interpreter. In 1980, Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to buy an operating system called QDOS for $50,000. Due to IBM deadlines, Gates and Allen felt that they didn't have enough time to develop an operating system from scratch; they therefore purchased the fully functional QDOS and reworked the code to fit IBM's needs. Microsoft won a contract to supply the finished program for use as the operating system of IBM's new PC. This became a foundation of Microsoft's remarkable growth.

Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease which was successfully treated by several months of radiation therapy and a bone marrow transplant.

In November 2000, Allen resigned from his position on the Microsoft board but was asked to consult as a senior strategy advisor to Microsoft executives. He put even more distance between himself and Microsoft at that time, selling 68 million shares of Microsoft. He still owned a reported 138 million shares.

Philanthropy

Much of Paul Allen's success has been dedicated to health and human services and toward the advancement of science and technology. The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation was established in 1986 to administer much of the giving. Through the Foundation, Allen awards nearly $30 million in grants annually. Approximately 75 percent of the Foundation's money goes to non-profit organizations in Seattle and the state of Washington. The remaining 25 percent is distributed to Portland, Oregon and other cities within the Pacific Northwest. Allen also contributes through other charitable projects known as venture philanthropy. The most famous of those projects are the Experience Music Project, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence through the Allen Telescope Array. Paul Allen's total philanthropy as of 2005 is estimated to be over US$43 billion.

The University of Washington has been a major recipient of Paul Allen's donations. In the late 1980s, Allen donated US$18 million to build a new library named after his father, Kenneth S. Allen. In 2003 US$5 million was donated to establish the Faye G. Allen Center for Visual Arts, named after his mother. Paul Allen also was the top private contributor (US$14 million) and namesake of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering (completed in 2004). Throughout the years, Allen has contributed millions of US dollars to the University of Washington Medical School, most recently US$3.2 million for prostatitis research.

Paul also has a flower fly named after him for his contributions to Dipterology, see Paul Allen's flower fly.

In 1993, Paul Allen funded the two-year lawsuit in which the family of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix regained the rights to his music after the estate administrator allegedly sold them without permission. Allen has also funded the purchase of many Hendrix artifacts (including the guitar Hendrix played at Woodstock) and ensured their public display in the Experience Music Project exhibits.

Seattle real estate investment and development efforts

Allen is a key developer and investor in the controversial development of the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle as a biotechnology hub. This development has been criticized by some as a city-supported real estate investment for Vulcan Inc. Concerns over the loss of low-income housing are prominent. Allen has made investments estimated at US$200 million as of 2005, and has promoted for city funding of a "South Lake Union Trolley" from Seattle's Westlake Center to the south end of Lake Union which some suggest would be of questionable contribution to the overall mass transit plan of the city.

Allen was a key financier and owner of the Experience Music Project.

Other investments

Forbes is reporting that Allen is going to invest $1.6 billion in the southern Asia country of Bangladesh. Most of the money will be used to build power plants and the rest to build fertilizer plants. For a time Allen's Vulcan Ventures owned TechTV, a 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco, California featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet.

Sports involvement

In 1988, Paul Allen purchased the Portland Trail Blazers NBA team for $70 million, and was instrumental in the development and funding of their Rose Garden Arena in 1993. One of Allen’s most memorable moments as owner of the Trail Blazers was his participation in a hot dog eating contest at halftime of a 2002 game against the Denver Nuggets. Allen managed to chow down ten hot dogs in 12 minutes, but was no match for world champion Takeru Kobayashi. In 1997, he purchased the Seattle Seahawks NFL team after city leaders asked him to save the team when former owner Ken Behring threatened to move the Seahawks to southern California. He played a large part in the development of the Seahawks' stadium, Qwest Field, although it was funded largely by taxpayer dollars.

Through his investment and project management company Vulcan Inc., Paul Allen also owns The Sporting News magazine.

Recently Allen has been asking Portland and Oregon officials for assistance in the financing of the Blazers, which he estimated would lose $100 million over the next three years. Portland Mayor Tom Potter has so far rebuffed the requests, and many Portland fans have been blaming Allen for the serious deterioration of the team's record, quality of play, and image in the community since 1996.

According to Forbes magazine in 2006, the Blazers are valued at approximately $300 million.

SpaceShipOne

Paul Allen (in sun glasses) and Burt Rutan (leather jacket) were presented with the Ansari X Prize by members of the X Prize Foundation in 2004.

In 2004, Allen confirmed that he was the sole investor behind Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne suborbital commercial spacecraft. SpaceShipOne was the first privately funded effort to successfully put a civilian in suborbital space and winner of the Ansari X Prize competition.

Octopus

In 2003, the launch of Paul Allen's 127m (416ft) Octopus secured its position as one of the world's largest yachts. Its current position is fourth in the List of motor yachts by length. Allen has two other very large yachts.

Personal life

Paul Allen has been single for his entire life. In 2005 New York Daily News reported that Paul Allen had been dating actress and former beauty queen Laura Harring, co-star of Mulholland Drive, for about 6 months.

External links

• Paul Allen
  • Paul Allen official home page
  • Vulcan Inc.
    • Vulcan website promoting controversial South Lake Union development
  • Project Halo
  • Cinerama

• Articles
  • The World's Richest People
  • Forbes 400 listing
  • Paul Allen as senior adviser to Microsoft
  • Paul Allen and Bill Gates

• Museums
  • Experience Music Project
  • Flying Heritage Collection
  • Microcomputer Gallery
  • Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame

• Philanthropy
  • Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
  • Allen Brain Atlas A project of the Allen Institute for Brain Science